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Studies Show That Staging Your Home Works

If you’re thinking of selling your home you may be wondering how to best show your home so it sells quickly and for the price you want. Your realtor may have already mentioned “staging” your home – making your home appealing to the broadest audience possible. Is hiring a stager worth it? The Real Estate Staging Association studied 89 homes that were previously on the market not staged. These 89 homes sat on the market, on average, for 166 days before the homeowners gave up and called in a professional home stager. Those same homes were staged and received their first offer, on average, 32 days after being professionally staged; 81% less time on the market. Nine of these homes had multiple offers. We recently asked a professional home stager, Helen Bartlett, from Refined Interior Staging Solutions, to learn more about hiring a home stager.

What are some of the reasons why homeowners don’t use a professional home stager?

Some of the most common reasons are:

They think they can’t afford to hire a home stager. They may assume home stagers charge what designers charge and in most cases, it’s less. The cost of staging can accommodate many budgets from a simple consultation to full house staging bring in partial pieces or complete rooms.

They think their homes are already beautifully decorated, either by themselves or professionally done so, therefore, there is no need for a stager. The fact of the matter is that even decorated homes need staging for the mere fact that just as going into many model homes, many people are focused on the decorating and not necessarily the house. With decorating, the focus is on the “stuff” and with home staging the focus in actually on the house and the features it has.

They think buyers can just look past any imperfections and flaws. Today’s buyer is much more sophisticated as compared to in the past. With all the access to information on shows and DIY classes, the internet, design ideas, etc. buyers are just expecting more than in the past and if a seller isn’t willing to make changes, a buyer will quickly move to the next property that may be more move in ready.

They never staged their home before, and it sold….so their thinking is it will again. And for the same reasons stated above, buyers are more sophisticated and are expecting more.

They don’t want to put any more money into their home because they’re selling it. The ROI on the investment of home staging is to average a sales price that is 7-10% more than a non-staged home. Also, staged properties sell 50-80% faster than non-staged homes eliminating several potential months of carrying costs. This all factors into the cost of not staging a home and defeats the purpose of not putting money into their current home.

If the house is vacant, a homeowner will think the space looks bigger. The truth is that a room always looks larger with furniture in it, furniture to scale. It also gives a buyer a perspective of how their furniture will fit and look and how to arrange the space.

Written by Anne Reagan|March 24, 2014

INCLUDE HOME STAGING ON ALL YOUR LISTINGS!
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